Portal:Books
The Books Portal
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As a conceptual object, a book refers to a written work of substantial length, which may be distributed either physically or digitally as an ebook. These works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). A physical book may not contain such a work: for example, it may contain only drawings, engravings, photographs, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls. It may also be left empty for personal use, as in the case of account books, appointment books, autograph books, notebooks, diaries and sketchbooks.
Books are sold at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online for delivery, and can be borrowed from libraries. The reception of books has led to a number of social consequences, including censorship.
The modern book industry has seen several major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books being read aloud). Awareness of the needs of print-disabled people has led to a rise in formats designed for greater accessibility, such as braille printing and large-print editions. Google Books estimated in 2010 that approximately 130 million total unique books had been published. (Full article...)
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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.-
Epiphanius of Salamis' book the Panarion is the main source of information regarding the Gospel of the Ebionites.
The Gospel of the Ebionites is the conventional name given by scholars to an apocryphal gospel extant only as seven brief quotations in a heresiology known as the Panarion, by Epiphanius of Salamis; he misidentified it as the "Hebrew" gospel, believing it to be a truncated and modified version of the Gospel of Matthew. The quotations were embedded in a polemic to point out inconsistencies in the beliefs and practices of a Jewish Christian sect known as the Ebionites relative to Nicene orthodoxy.
The surviving fragments derive from a gospel harmony of the Synoptic Gospels, composed in Greek with various expansions and abridgments reflecting the theology of the writer. Distinctive features include the absence of the virgin birth and of the genealogy of Jesus; an Adoptionist Christology, in which Jesus is chosen to be God's Son at the time of his Baptism; the abolition of the Jewish sacrifices by Jesus; and an advocacy of vegetarianism. (Full article...) -
Wordless novels flourished in Germany in the 1920s and typically were made using woodcut or similar techniques in an Expressionist style. (Frans Masereel, 25 Images of a Man's Passion, 1918)
The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques, the terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are also used. The genre flourished primarily in the 1920s and 1930s and was most popular in Germany.
The wordless novel has its origin in the German Expressionist movement of the early 20th century. The typically socialist work drew inspiration from medieval woodcuts and used the awkward look of that medium to express angst and frustration at social injustice. The first such book was the Belgian Frans Masereel's 25 Images of a Man's Passion, published in 1918. The German Otto Nückel and other artists followed Masereel's example. Lynd Ward brought the genre to the United States in 1929 when he produced Gods' Man, which inspired other American wordless novels and a parody in 1930 by cartoonist Milt Gross with He Done Her Wrong. Following an early-1930s peak in production and popularity, the genre waned in the face of competition from sound films and anti-socialist censorship in Nazi Germany and the US. (Full article...) -
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative book by American author Annie Dillard. Told from a first-person point of view, the book details Dillard's explorations near her home, and various contemplations on nature and life. The title refers to Tinker Creek, which is outside Roanoke in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Dillard began Pilgrim in the spring of 1973, using her personal journals as inspiration. Separated into four sections that signify each of the seasons, the narrative takes place over the period of one year.
The book records the narrator's thoughts on solitude, writing, and religion, as well as scientific observations on the flora and fauna she encounters. It touches on themes of faith, nature, and awareness, and is also noted for its study of theodicy and the cruelty of the natural world. The author has described it as a "book of theology", and she rejects the label of nature writer. Dillard considers the story a "single sustained nonfiction narrative", although several chapters have been anthologized separately in magazines and other publications. The book is analogous in design and genre to Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), the subject of Dillard's master's thesis at Hollins College. Critics often compare Dillard to authors from the Transcendentalist movement; Edward Abbey in particular deemed her Thoreau's "true heir". (Full article...) -
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an autobiography written by American minister Malcolm X, who collaborated with American journalist Alex Haley. It was released posthumously on October 29, 1965, nine months after his assassination. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and 1965. The Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. After the leader was killed, Haley wrote the book's epilogue. He described their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm X's life.
While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the book's publication regarded Haley as the book's ghostwriter, modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers. Haley influenced some of Malcolm X's literary choices. For example, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Haley. Rather than rewriting earlier chapters as a polemic against the Nation which Malcolm X had rejected, Haley persuaded him to favor a style of "suspense and drama". According to Manning Marable, "Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti-Semitism" and he rewrote material to eliminate it. (Full article...) -
Ace Books is a publisher of science fiction (SF) and fantasy books founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn. It began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns, and soon branched out into other genres, publishing its first science fiction title in 1953. This was successful, and science fiction titles outnumbered both mysteries and westerns within a few years. Other genres also made an appearance, including nonfiction, gothic novels, media tie-in novelizations, and romances. Ace became known for the tête-bêche binding format used for many of its early books, although it did not originate the format. Most of the early titles were published in this "Ace Double" format, and Ace continued to issue books in varied genres, bound tête-bêche, until 1973.
Ace, along with Ballantine Books, was one of the leading science fiction publishers for its first ten years of operation. The death of owner A. A. Wyn in 1967 set the stage for a later decline in the publisher's fortunes. Two leading editors, Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, left in 1971, and in 1972 Ace was sold to Grosset & Dunlap. Despite financial troubles, there were further successes, particularly with the third Ace Science Fiction Specials series, for which Carr came back as editor. Further mergers and acquisitions resulted in the company becoming absorbed by Berkley Books. Ace later became an imprint of Penguin Group (USA). (Full article...) -
The World Without Us is a 2007 non-fiction book about what would happen to the natural and built environment if humans suddenly disappeared, written by American journalist Alan Weisman and published by St. Martin's Thomas Dunne Books. It is a book-length expansion of Weisman's own February 2005 Discover article "Earth Without People". Written largely as a thought experiment, it outlines, for example, how cities and houses would deteriorate, how long man-made artifacts would last, and how remaining lifeforms would evolve. Weisman concludes that residential neighborhoods would become forests within 500 years, and that radioactive waste, bronze statues, plastics and Mount Rushmore would be among the longest-lasting evidence of human presence on Earth.
The author of four previous books and numerous articles for magazines, Weisman had traveled to interview academics, scientists and other authorities. He used quotations from these interviews to explain the effects of the natural environment and to substantiate predictions. The book has been translated and published in many countries. It was successful in the U.S., reaching #6 on the New York Times Best Seller list and #1 on the San Francisco Chronicle Best-Sellers list in September 2007. It ranked #1 on Time and Entertainment Weekly's top 10 non-fiction books of 2007. (Full article...) -
The Halo Graphic Novel is a graphic novel anthology of the military science fiction video game series Halo, published by Marvel Comics in partnership with Bungie. The Halo Graphic Novel was the series' first entry into the sequential art medium, and features aspects of the Halo universe which until then had not been discussed or seen in any medium.
The majority of the book is divided into four short stories by different writers and artists from the computer game and comic industries. Each story focuses on different aspects of the Halo universe, revealing stories that are tangential to the main plot of the game. Apart from the stories, the book also contains an extensive art gallery compiled of contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources. (Full article...) -
Southern Cross is the sole wordless novel by Canadian artist Laurence Hyde (1914–1987). Published in 1951, its 118 wood-engraved images narrate the impact of atomic testing on Pacific islanders. Hyde made the book to express his anger at the US military's nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll.
The wordless novel genre had flourished primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, but by the 1940s even the most prolific practitioners had abandoned it. Hyde was familiar with some such works by Lynd Ward, Otto Nückel, and the form's pioneer Frans Masereel. The high-contrast artwork of Southern Cross features dynamic curving lines uncommon in wood engraving and combines abstract imagery with realistic detail. It has gained appreciation in comics circles as a precursor to the Canadian graphic novel, though it had no direct influence. (Full article...) -
Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies is a music reference book by American music journalist and essayist Robert Christgau. It was first published in October 1981 by Ticknor & Fields. The book compiles approximately 3,000 of Christgau's capsule album reviews, most of which were originally written for his "Consumer Guide" column in The Village Voice throughout the 1970s. The entries feature annotated details about each record's release and cover a variety of genres related to rock music.
Christgau's reviews are informed by an interest in the aesthetic and political dimensions of popular music, a belief that it could be consumed intelligently, and a desire to communicate his ideas to readers in an entertaining, provocative, and compact way. Many of the older reviews were rewritten for the guide to reflect his changed perspective and matured stylistic approach. He undertook an intense preparation process for the book during 1979 and 1980, which temporarily hindered both his awareness of current music and his marriage to fellow writer Carola Dibbell, whom he later credited as an influence on his work. (Full article...) -
Mom & Me & Mom (2013) is the seventh and final book in author Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies. The book was published shortly before Mother's Day and Angelou's 85th birthday. It focuses, for the first time in her books, on Angelou's relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter. The book explains Baxter's behavior, especially Baxter's abandonment of Angelou and Angelou's older brother when they were young children, and fills in "what are possibly the final blanks in Angelou's eventful life". The book also chronicles Angelou's reunion and reconciliation with Baxter.
Mom & Me & Mom is an overview of Angelou's life and revisits many of the same anecdotes she relates in her previous books. The first section, entitled "Mom & Me", centers on Angelou's early years, before the age of 17, and her transition from resentment and distrust of her mother to acceptance, support, and love towards her. After Baxter helps her through the birth of her son, Angelou goes from calling Baxter "Lady" to "Mom". In the book's second section, entitled "Me & Mom", Angelou chronicles the unconditional love, support, and assistance they gave to each other, as Baxter helps her through single motherhood, a failed marriage, and career ups and downs. As she had begun to do in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and continued throughout her series, Angelou upheld the long traditions of African-American autobiography. At the same time she made a deliberate attempt to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. She had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. Angelou was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". She had also become "a major autobiographical voice of the time". (Full article...) -
True at First Light is a book by American writer Ernest Hemingway about his 1953–54 safari in Kenya with his fourth wife Mary. It was released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. In the book, which blends memoir and fiction, Hemingway explores conflict within a marriage, the conflict between the European and native cultures in Africa, and the fear a writer feels when his work becomes impossible. True at First Light includes descriptions of his earlier friendships with other writers and digressive ruminations on the nature of writing.
Hemingway began writing the book after he and his wife were involved in two plane crashes in the African bush in a two-day period in January 1954. He spent much of the next two years in Havana, recuperating and writing the manuscript of what he called "the Africa book", which remained unfinished at the time of his suicide in July 1961. Hemingway's son Patrick edited the work to half its original length to strengthen the underlying storyline and emphasize the fictional aspects. (Full article...) -
Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots is an 1832 book containing 42 hand-coloured lithographs by Edward Lear. He produced 175 copies for sale to subscribers as a part-publication, which were later bound as a book. Lear started painting parrots in 1830 when he was 18 years old, and to get material for his book he studied live birds at the London Zoo and in private collections. The latter included those of Edward Smith Stanley, later 13th Earl of Derby, who had a large menagerie at Knowsley Hall, and Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens. Lear drew onto lithographic plates for printing by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, who was known for the quality of his reproductions of fine art.
Although the book was a financial failure, Lear's paintings of parrots established his reputation as one of the best natural history artists of his time. It found him work with John Gould, Stanley and other leading contemporary naturalists, and the young Queen Victoria engaged him to help her with her painting technique. Parrots was a forerunner to the major volumes of bird paintings by Gould, and Lear's work has influenced children's illustrators such as Beatrix Potter and Maurice Sendak as well as bird specialists like William T. Cooper, Elizabeth Butterworth and Walton Ford. (Full article...) -
Frontispiece and title page of 1773 edition
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1760 to 1794, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shillings and sixpence. A contemporary report of 1791 estimates its circulation at about 8,000 copies annually.
Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden. Through their erotic prose, the list's entries review some of these women in lurid detail. While most compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favour with the list's authors, who are never revealed. (Full article...) -
A History of the Birds of Europe, Including all the Species Inhabiting the Western Palearctic Region is a nine-volume ornithological book published in parts between 1871 and 1896. It was mainly written by Henry Eeles Dresser, although Richard Bowdler Sharpe co-authored the earlier volumes. It describes all the bird species reliably recorded in the wild in Europe and adjacent geographical areas with similar fauna, giving their worldwide distribution, variations in appearance and migratory movements.
The pioneering ornithological work of John Ray and Francis Willughby in the seventeenth century had introduced an effective classification system based on anatomical features, and a dichotomous key to help readers identify birds. This was followed by other English-language ornithologies, notably John Gould's five-volume Birds of Europe published between 1832 and 1837. Sharpe, then librarian of the Zoological Society of London, had worked closely with Gould and wanted to expand on his work by including all species reliably recorded in Europe, North Africa, parts of the Middle East and the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira, the Canary Islands and the Azores. He lacked the resources to undertake this task on his own, so he proposed to Dresser that they work together on this encyclopaedia, using Dresser's extensive collection of birds and their eggs and network of contacts. (Full article...) -
Title page from the first edition of Original Stories (1788)
Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by the 18th-century English feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story that sketches out the education of two young girls by their maternal teacher Mrs. Mason, followed by a series of didactic tales. The book was first published by Joseph Johnson in 1788; a second, illustrated edition, with engravings by William Blake, was released in 1791 and remained in print for around a quarter of a century.
In Original Stories, Wollstonecraft employed the then-burgeoning genre of children's literature to promote the education of women and an emerging middle-class ideology. She argued that women would be able to become rational adults if they were educated properly as children, which was not a widely held belief in the 18th century, and contended that the nascent middle-class ethos was superior to the court culture represented by fairy tales and to the values of chance and luck found in chapbook stories for the poor. Wollstonecraft, in developing her own pedagogy, also responded to the works of the two most important educational theorists of the 18th century: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (Full article...)
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Selected picture
Credit: Ernst Haeckel
The 99th plate illustration from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1904), showing a variety of hummingbirds.Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature) is a book of lithographic and autotype prints by German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Originally published in sets of ten between 1899 and 1904 and as a complete volume in 1904, it consists of 100 prints of various organisms, many of which were first described by Haeckel himself.
More Did you know (auto generated)
- ... that librarian Amanda Jones won an award from the American Library Association for not backing down after receiving death threats for speaking out against book censorship?
- ... that History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brothers in the Caribbean by C. G. A. Oldendorp was the first book to publish Igbo-language terms in 1777?
- ... that Japanese bookstore employees recommended Candy Color Paradox as one of the best yaoi manga titles in 2016?
- ... that physicist Sabine Hossenfelder's book Existential Physics discusses whether free will, the multiverse, the existence of God, and the meaning of life are topics that science can answer?
- ... that Bulkboeken ('bulk books') were cheap reprints of Dutch literary classics, published from 1971 to the late 1990s, and again from 2007?
- ... that Maystorm, a character from Ultimate X-Men, was initially created for a variant cover for the comic X-Men?
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Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book is a 1986 book by Hilary Spurling containing and describing the recipes in a book inscribed by Elinor Fettiplace with the date 1604 and compiled in her lifetime: the manuscript contains additions and marginal notes in several hands. Spurling is the wife of a descendant of Fettiplace who had inherited the manuscript. The book provides a direct view of Elizabethan era cookery in an aristocratic country house, with Fettiplace's notes on household management.
The book was well received by critics as revealing previously unknown aspects of Elizabethan household life. Spurling was praised for testing the recipes, a challenging task. The historian Elaine Leong cautioned that the homely title could obscure the complex history of the text's authorship and ownership. (Full article...) -
Saman is an Indonesian novel by Ayu Utami published in 1998. It is Utami's first novel, and depicts the lives of four sexually-liberated female friends, and a former Catholic priest, Saman, for whom the book is named. Written in seven to eight months while Utami was unemployed, Saman sold over 100,000 copies and ignited a new literary movement known as sastra wangi (originally used pejoratively) that opened the doors to an influx of sexually-themed literary works by young Indonesian women.
Saman deals explicitly with themes of sexuality, taboo for women writers in Indonesia at that time. She also writes about the supernatural and mysticism. Utami has said the stories reflect some of her personal experiences, such as her loss of religion which mirrors that of the priest, Saman. Utami also includes passages reflecting the destructiveness of Suharto's political authoritarianism; in later interviews she said the political realities reflected in Saman are still applicable to post-Suharto Indonesia. (Full article...) -
White Dog, released in France as Chien Blanc, is a non-fiction autobiographical novel written by Romain Gary. Originally published as a short story in Life in 1970 (9 October), the full novel was published in 1970 in French in France by Éditions Gallimard. Gary's English version of the novel was published in North America in the same year by New American Library. The novel provides a fictionalized account of Gary and his wife's experiences in the 1960s with a stray Alabama police dog trained to attack black people on sight, and their attempts to have the dog reprogrammed.
Gary uses the novel as a vehicle to denounce both racism and the activists supporting African-American rights, including his own ex-wife Jean Seberg and Marlon Brando. He also examines whether human responses to situations, including racism, are learned social behavior and whether they can be unlearned. In 1981, it was adapted into the controversial film of the same name, in which director Samuel Fuller made various changes to the novel's story to focus more on the dog and present a more pessimistic ending than the original novel. The film's American release after negative press from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) led to concerns of boycotts. Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette released a more faithful adaptation of the book in 2022. (Full article...) -
Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals is a 2008 book co-written by the evangelical authors Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, two important figures in New Monasticism. The book asserts that the countercultural themes in the ministry of Jesus, such as those of self-denial, are ignored by American Christians because they have become accustomed to exercising Christian privilege and are unwilling to give it up.
Jesus for President received generally positive reviews from critics in both secular and Christian media. David Swanson wrote a three-part review of Jesus for President in Christianity Today, in which he argues that "Claiborne and Haw make a compelling case that the church in America has become much too cozy with the state". Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy was heavily critical of the book, calling the book's pacifism both utopian and anti-American. (Full article...) -
L. Ron Hubbard, the subject of Bare-Faced Messiah
Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard is a posthumous biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard by British journalist Russell Miller. First published in the United Kingdom on 26 October 1987, the book takes a critical perspective, challenging the Church of Scientology's account of Hubbard's life and work. It quotes extensively from official documents acquired using the Freedom of Information Act and from Hubbard's personal papers, which were obtained via a defector from Scientology. It was also published in Australia, Canada and the United States.
Reviews of the book have been broadly positive — one calling it "the best and most comprehensive biography of L. Ron Hubbard" — and praise the quality and depth of Miller's research. (Full article...) -
Freedom of Expression® is a book written by Kembrew McLeod about freedom of speech issues involving concepts of intellectual property. The book was first published in 2005 by Doubleday as Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity, and in 2007 by University of Minnesota Press as Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property. The paperback edition includes a foreword by Lawrence Lessig. The author recounts a history of the use of counter-cultural artistry, illegal art, and the use of copyrighted works in art as a form of fair use and creative expression. The book encourages the reader to continue such uses in art and other forms of creative expression.
The book received a positive reception and the Intellectual Freedom Round Table of the American Library Association awarded McLeod with the Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award, which honors the "best published work in the area of intellectual freedom". A review in The American Scholar said that McLeod " ... delivers a lively, personal account of the ways intellectual property messes with people—and how he messes with intellectual property." American Book Review said the work is "a clever compendium of examples" for those familiar with its subject matter. The Journal of Popular Culture called it "an informative, thought-provoking, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny examination of specific ways the privatization of ideas suppresses creativity in contemporary culture." Publishers Weekly said that McLeod's views echo prior comments about intellectual property by academics—including Lessig. (Full article...) -
A New System of Domestic Cookery, first published in 1806 by Maria Rundell, was the most popular English cookery book of the first half of the nineteenth century; it is often referred to simply as Mrs Rundell, but its full title is A New System of Domestic Cookery: Formed Upon Principles of Economy; and Adapted to the Use of Private Families.
Mrs Rundell has been called "the original domestic goddess" and her book "a publishing sensation" and "the most famous cookery book of its time". It ran to over 67 editions; the 1865 edition had grown to 644 pages, and earned two thousand guineas. (Full article...) -
First edition cover of Palmetto Leaves
Palmetto Leaves is a memoir and travel guide written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about her winters in the town of Mandarin, Florida, published in 1873. Already famous for having written Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe came to Florida after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). She purchased a plantation near Jacksonville as a place for her son to recover from the injuries he had received as a Union soldier and to make a new start in life. After visiting him, she became so enamored with the region she purchased a cottage and orange grove for herself and wintered there until 1884, even though the plantation failed within its first year. Parts of Palmetto Leaves appeared in a newspaper published by Stowe's brother, as a series of letters and essays about life in northeast Florida.
Scion of New England clergy, Stowe keenly felt a sense of Christian responsibility that was expressed in her letters. She considered it her duty to help improve the lives of newly emancipated blacks and detailed her efforts to establish a school and church in Mandarin toward these ends. Parts of the book relate the lives of local African-Americans and the customs of their society. Stowe described the charm of the region and its generally moderate climate but warned readers of "excessive" heat in the summer months and occasional cold snaps in winter. Her audience comprises relatives, friends, and strangers in New England who ask her advice about whether or not to move to Florida, which at the time was still mostly wilderness. Although it is a minor work in Stowe's oeuvre, Palmetto Leaves was one of the first travel guides written about Florida and stimulated Florida's first boom of tourism and residential development in the 1880s. (Full article...) -
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control is a 2004 popular science book explaining mind control, brainwashing, thought reform and coercive persuasion by neuroscientist and physiologist Kathleen Taylor. It explains the neurological basis for reasoning and cognition in the brain, and proposes that the self is changeable, and describes the physiology of neurological pathways. It reviews case studies including Patty Hearst, the Manson Family, and the mass murder/suicide of members of Peoples Temple at Jonestown, and compares the techniques of influence used by cults to those of totalitarian and communist societies. It lays out a model FACET – Freedom, Agency, Complexity, Ends-not-means, and Thinking – which she believes can be used to negate the influence of brainwashing techniques. (Full article...)
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Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future is a 1990 speculative evolution and science fiction book written by Scottish geologist and palaeontologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by Philip Hood. The book also features a foreword by Brian Aldiss. Man After Man explores a hypothetical future path of human evolution set from 200 years in the future to 5 million years in the future, with several future human species evolving through genetic engineering and natural means through the course of the book.
Man After Man is Dixon's third work on speculative evolution, following After Man (1981) and The New Dinosaurs (1988). Unlike the previous two books, which were written much like field guides, the focus of Man After Man lies much on the individual perspectives of future human individuals of various species. Man After Man, like its predecessors, uses its fictional setting to explore and explain real natural processes, in this case climate change through the eyes of the various human descendants in the book, who have been engineered specifically to adapt to it. (Full article...) -
The Path of Modern Yoga: The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice is a 2016 history of the modern practice of postural yoga by the yoga scholar Elliott Goldberg. It focuses in detail on eleven pioneering figures of the transformation of yoga in the 20th century, including Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, Pant Pratinidhi, Krishnamacharya, B. K. S. Iyengar and Indra Devi.
The book's thesis is that modern yoga progressed in three stages from its pre-1900 state to what is observed today. Before 1900, haṭha yoga was the despised religious practice of a small minority on the fringes of Indian society. In the first stage, pioneers such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda treated yoga as the subject of medical inquiry, making it both secular and socially acceptable. Next, advocates of exercise brought standing poses from gymnastics into yoga: Pant Pratinidhi advocated Surya Namaskar (the sun salutation), a jumped sequence of poses, as daily exercise, while Krishnamacharya incorporated those poses and others as standing asanas in his yoga, along with the jumped transitions (vinyasas) between them, making yoga dynamic. Finally, two pupils of Krishnamacharya, Iyengar (Full article...) -
The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy is an influential anthropological study of socially sanctioned "cultural" cannibalism across the world, which casts a critical perspective on the existence of such practices. It was authored by the American anthropologist William Arens of Stony Brook University, New York, and first published by Oxford University Press in 1979.
Arens' primary hypothesis is that despite claims made by western explorers and anthropologists since the 15th century, there is no firm, substantiable evidence for the socially accepted practice of cannibalism anywhere in the world, at any time in history. Dismissing claims of cultural cannibalism made against the Carib and Aztec peoples by invading Spanish colonialists, he tackles 19th and 20th century claims regarding socially acceptable cannibalism in Sub-Saharan Africa and New Guinea. Turning to prehistory, he critiques archaeological claims to have discovered evidence for such practices in Europe and North America. In the second half of the work, Arens puts forward his argument that an erroneous belief in "others" who commit socially sanctioned cannibalism is a global phenomenon. He proceeds to chastise the anthropological community for perpetuating the "Man-Eating Myth", suggesting reasons as to why they have done so. (Full article...) -
Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street (1974) is a non-fiction book written by Gerald S. Lesser, in which he describes the production of Sesame Street, and the formation and pedagogical philosophy of the Children's Television Workshop. Lesser was a professor at Harvard University, studying how social class and ethnicity interacted with school achievement and was one of the first academics in the US who researched how watching television affected children and their development. He was initially skeptical about the potential of using television as a teaching tool, but he was eventually named as the advisory board chairman of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization created to oversee the production and research of Sesame Street, and was the show's first educational director. Lesser wrote the book early in Sesame Street's history, to evaluate the show's effectiveness, to explain what its writers, researchers, and producers were attempting to do, and to respond to criticism of Sesame Street.
Children and Television has four sections, "A Proposal", "Planning", "Broadcasting" and "Lessons from Sesame Street". The book also has a preface and an epilogue, written by Lesser, a foreword written by co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney, and an introduction by co-creator Lloyd Morrisett. Scattered throughout the book are cartoons drawn by children's author Maurice Sendak. Lesser describes the origin and development of Sesame Street and his part in it. He also describes the research involved in the show's creation and production. (Full article...) -
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975; 25th anniversary edition 2000) is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson. It helped start the sociobiology debate, one of the great scientific controversies in biology of the 20th century and part of the wider debate about evolutionary psychology and the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. Wilson popularized the term "sociobiology" as an attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviour such as altruism, aggression, and the nurturing of the young. It formed a position within the long-running nature versus nurture debate. The fundamental principle guiding sociobiology is that an organism's evolutionary success is measured by the extent to which its genes are represented in the next generation.
The book was generally well-reviewed in biological journals. It received a much more mixed reaction among sociologists, mainly triggered by the brief coverage of the implications of sociobiology for human society in the first and last chapters of the book; the body of the text was largely welcomed. Such was the level of interest in the debate that a review reached the front page of the New York Times. The sociologist Gerhard Lenski, admitting that sociologists needed to look further into non-human societies, agreed that human society was founded on biology but denied both biological reductionism and determinism. Lenski observed that since the nature-nurture dichotomy was false, there was no reason for sociologists and biologists to disagree. Other sociologists objected in particular to the final chapter, on "Man": Devra G. Kleiman called Wilson's attempt to extend his thesis to humans weak and premature, and noted that he had largely overlooked the importance of co-operative behaviour and females in mammalian societies. (Full article...) -
Don't Forget the Bacon! is a children's book written and illustrated by Pat Hutchins. It was published by Bodley Head in 1976. The story is about a little boy who tries to memorise a list of groceries his mother has asked him to buy. The book has been used as a teaching tool to instruct children about early learning concepts.
In an analysis of teaching tools for remedial readers, Maurice Saxby notes in the book Books in the Life of a Child: Bridges to Literature & Learning, "Hutchins's Don't Forget the Bacon has been one of my most successful texts." Andrea Hillbrick's Tuning in with Task Cards includes a teaching lesson structured around the boy's shopping list from the story. The book Foundation Blocks suggests Don't Forget the Bacon! be used to teach children about the concept of miscommunication, and Bilinguality and Literacy lists the story among those used to help assist a bilingual child develop fluency in English. (Full article...)
Selected quote
| “ | A single book at the right time can change our views dramatically, give a quantum boost to our knowledge, help us construct a whole new outlook on the world and our life. Isn't it odd that we don't seek those experiences more systematically? | ” |
| — Steve Leveen | ||
Did you know
- ...that in woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page?(Pictured)
- ...that the author of The Strange Death of Tory England advises UK Conservatives to learn from the conservatism of the socialist George Orwell?
- ...that Oliver Twist is the first novel in the English language to centre throughout on a child protagonist?
General images
The following are images from various book-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books) -
An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works. (from History of books) -
Page from the Blue Quran manuscript, ca. 9th or 10th century CE (from History of books) -
12-metre-high (40 ft) sculpture of a stack of books at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books) -
The Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (from History of books) -
Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books) -
Jikji, Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters, the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. (from History of books) -
Modern book spine designs (from Bookbinding) -
Sammelband of three alchemical treatises, bound in Strasbourg by Samuel Emmel c. 1568, showing metal clasps and leather covering of boards (from Bookbinding) -
Page spread with J. A. van de Graaf's construction of classical text area (print space) and margin proportions (from Book design) -
The spine of the book is an important aspect in book design, especially in the cover design. When the books are stacked up or stored in a shelf, the details on the spine is the only visible surface that contains the information about the book. In a book store, it is often the details on the spine that attract the attention first. (from Book design)
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Cloth book cover with attached paper panel, mimicking half leather binding (from Bookbinding) -
Modern paperback spines (from Bookbinding) -
Example of blind tooling a book binding with exquisite detail (from Bookbinding) -
The scene in Botticelli's Madonna of the Book (1480) reflects the presence of books in the houses of richer people in his time. (from History of books) -
9th-century Qur'an in Reza Abbasi Museum (from Bookbinding) -
Traditionally sewn book opened flat (from Bookbinding) -
Hardbound book with half leather binding (spine and corners) and marbled boards (from Bookbinding) -
A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books) -
Three books with different titling orientations:
(left) ascending
(middle) descending
(right) upright (from Bookbinding) -
Marbled book board from a book published in London in 1872 (from Bookbinding) -
Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books) -
European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books) -
European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books) -
A Chinese bamboo book (from History of books) -
Book conservators at the State Library of New South Wales, 1943 (from Bookbinding) -
Design by Hans Holbein the Younger for a metalwork book cover (or treasure binding) (from Book design) -
European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books) -
A traditional bookbinder at work (from Bookbinding) -
A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books) -
Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books) -
Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books) -
Rebacking saving original spine, showing one volume finished and one untouched (from Bookbinding) -
Folio from a manuscript of the Shanamah (Book of Kings) (from History of books) -
The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books) -
Hardbound book spine stitching (from Bookbinding) -
Bookbinder's type holder (from Bookbinding) -
Decorative binding with figurehead of the 12th century manuscript Liber Landavensis (from Bookbinding) -
Dresden Codex (page 49) (from History of books) -
Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the Codex Amiatinus (c. 700) (from Bookbinding) -
Scheme of common book design(from Bookbinding)- Belly band
- Flap
- Endpaper
- Book cover
- Head
- Fore edge
- Tail
- Right page, recto
- Left page, verso
- Gutter
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A Sumerian clay tablet, currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, inscribed with the text of the poem Inanna and Ebih by the priestess Enheduanna, the first author whose name is known
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Web resources
- Bookbinding and the Conservation of books, A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, 1982 by Matt T. Roberts and Don Etherington
- IOBA glossary of book terms
- Project Gutenberg - Free e-Books
- Words at Large: The best in books from CBC.ca
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